When I played it last night my scores weren't registering for some reason . I was on 310k but then reset my score and ranking to see what would happen. My old score didn't reset when I played it in the afternoon, even after scoring around 300k 3 times. When I put it on last night though my high score was only 91k.I played another couple of rounds, both times scoring around 300k again and was never asked if I wanted to register it. I'm going to play it in a bit, hopefully it's back to normal again.

@OorWullie You might need to start the game in the regular mode not 'high-score' or 'caravan' and then hit the plus button to get the usual Hamster menu up. I recall in there is the option to do something with posting scores online. Maybe it is reset or yes/no toggle? I can't remember off the top of my head exactly. Anyway, that is worth a shot as you may have inadvertently stopped your scores from being uploaded to the online leaderboard.

Ok I'm definitely out of it, too much RNG involved. It takes me forever to get a single correct sequence and when I get it I'm not focused anymore so I'll end up playing my Z-game. I'll go play something else untill next contest

@Lroy just my opinion, I'm going to calm down a bit because I think I'm overdoing, and the fact I can't reliably and consistently train myself on the only sequence that could lead to the best scores just takes away much of my enthusiasm. Maybe I'll do a couple of runs here and there, it's like a lottery anyway. It's a pity, don't know how many other psykyo games involve randomized stage order but I agree we must address this problem. Furthermore I think that playing on a common ground is the only way to create a fair competition. Just my 2c anyway, feel free to discuss!

Don't get me wrong, I love the game. As a competition though, it not very balanced. I don't mind going till Thursday. I must confess when I picked Aero Fighters 2, I had no idea about the disparity of the scores possible between Paris and basically all the other stages! So I apologise for my choice. Hope it hasn't made people weary of this awesome thread.

I never drive faster than I can see. Besides, it's all in the reflexes.

@GrailUK Not at all. I'm loving this thread and have really enjoyed putting more time into AERO FIGHTERS 2. It was a great pick and we needed to discover this 'random level' element sooner rather than later and take that into consideration for future games. Like Meppi said earlier, we can get round it by picking another mode or something.

@GrailUK love the game to be honest, it's just that the level randomization doesn't work well with the caravan formula! I'm perfectly fine, let's go on till the deadline: I don't think I'll force too much, I'll do a couple of runs to take a break from my other games (just grabbed Bayonetta 1& 2!) to see if I can improve. Didn't mean to be negative btw

I fortunately managed to lock myself in on the Jungle>NY rotation, I wish I had more time to play this week, though. We'll see how it goes.

@wasilweski Have you tried killing off your planes on Paris until the game over screen comes up, then resetting when the caravan menu pops up by itself? It does help cycle the stage rotation. And you can lock the stage rotation you want by resetting before the game over screen comes up or finishing the whole 5 minutes (like what we've been doing all along when we get Paris).

@GrailUK It's cool, I don't think anyone would have known except for the other high scorers that played the caravan before us.

I'm done. Not sure how to get a higher score based on time and what I've been doing. My runs have nearly been perfect based on level progression and even bonus pickups and I still can't figure out how to best this score without a scientific-method. Which sucks. Chasing scores up leaderboards is only fun when the skill-ceiling is the thing holding your score back, not specific methods and lucky-draws and so on, IMO. So, unless I get inspired to reinstall AF2 - yes, I was THAT much done with this run, I uninstalled it - and give it a few final takes... My score stands at 447,900

My next thought is on the next game pick, and I was wondering what stops us from picking ANY game with a leaderboard or scoring mechanic? I'm beginning to want to define the "rules" of what we've started doing here more. Ideas?

I don't think I've had Paris any more frequent than the other stages and when I do get it, it's more often than not on the 4th stage.

I played 5 rounds earlier and each time the Jungle was stage 2. 4 of they 5 times I made it to the 4th stage which was New York each time. Now it might have just been pure luck that they kept arriving in that order however I did use a different pilot each time. I'm not sure what difference that would make but it seems to be working for me. I was going to use just 2 pilots but when I saw the stages coming in that order I kept selecting a new one each time and it worked.

Tried again last night and had Jungle-NY progression right from the start. It was worth a try, eventually I managed to reach 6th place with 470k-something score, just behind fellow @GrailUK.

I did some research on Psykyo SHMUPS and, as I suspected, it turns out that in each game the first few levels are randomly generated. This applies to Strikers 1945, Strikers 1945 II, Gunbird, Samurai Aces and Zero Gunner 2, and it is something we should definitely need to take into account in our competition.